We went to see an entertaining show last night on the ’60s, the last decade from which I know any popular songs whatsoever. My political conversion also turned out to mean that I never listened to popular music again, something I didn’t even notice until one day when I read about some song that everyone knew – “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” – which I had never heard a bar of. But the music of the ’60s I absorbed along with the politics. This is from the notice.

This story is about the rise of Joan Baez from folk singer, to performing the songs of Bob Dylan and Peter Seager [sic], all culminating in her brilliant performance at Woodstock in 1969. Joan became the voice of the peace movement with songs like ‘Joe Hill’, ‘We Shall Overcome’, ‘With God On Our Side’ and many more. All will be sung in this show. The Road To Woodstock is the story of one woman’s commitment to the peace movement and the music that accompanied it.

That they could not spell Pete Seeger’s name, and called him Peter [!!!!!], only shows how the times have been a changin’. But what made me laugh out loud was when “Joan Baez” said, “as Abe Hoffman used to say, if you remember the ’60s you weren’t there”. The actress being about 20-odd wasn’t there but I was. Reluctantly (my wife made me) I mentioned to her after the show that it had been Abbie Hoffman and not Abe. This was news to her, and obviously to all the others who had gone along in the many nights before.

I never did meet Abbie but I met Jerry Rubin at the University of Toronto back around 1969-ish. He had come to visit and I was sort of in the outer ring of the inner circle of the campus left so we met up. And we had a conversation in which I said to him that, you know, all this, all this radical revolutionary stuff will end, and he said to me, which I remember as clear as any memory I have, “No, it will never end!” And you know what? He was right. The long hair may be gone, and the folk songs, the communes and the rest, all gone, vanished. But those are mere ephemera. What really counts remains. All that was once radical and revolutionary is mainstream. Our culture is a disaster zone. You may think watching ISIS knock over 5000 year old statues is a unique form of vandalism, but I watch Obama and the political elites of my own civilisation knocking over many of our cultural icons and find much the same being done to the traditions of the Judeo-Christian West. But I am used to the idea that 2115 will be as different from today as today is from 1915. I may not like it, but I can’t stop it either.

As for Joan Baez, a product of her time as we are all. Al Capp’s Joanie Phoanie she may be, but a great singer as well.